About me
I am a biologist at an environmental consulting company based in California, where I help assess and quantify potential impacts to the state’s diverse natural resources. My work supports regulatory compliance and mitigation planning for infrastructure projects, ensuring that impacts to wildlife, vegetation, and sensitive habitats are properly considered. I am also expanding my knowledge of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to better understand how these regulations guide environmental assessments and permitting processes in California.
Interested in collaborating? Feel free to reach out!
Mosquito Ecology
As a postdoc in the Vector Genetics Laboratory at UC Davis, I studied the landscape ecology of Anopheles mosquitoes in São Tomé and Príncipe. Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals in the world, responsible for transmitting diseases like malaria, which continues to pose a major public health challenge. My research integrated remote sensing, ecological modeling, and landscape genetics to understand how habitat structure influences mosquito movement and population connectivity. These insights are critical for vector control strategies, including genetically engineered mosquitoes, a key focus of our lab. Our findings were recently published in Landscape Ecology.
In addition to my landscape ecology research, I had the opportunity to participate in a mark-release-recapture experiment, contributing to efforts to track mosquito dispersal and survival in the field. I also conducted a predator growth rate study with jumping spiders (Phidippus audax), incorporating my background in arachnology into my mosquito research. This interdisciplinary perspective has helped me explore ecological interactions across different taxa and develop a broader understanding of predator-prey dynamics. Look out for both of these research findings soon!
Spider Evolution and Biogeography
My PhD research focused on the island biogeography of Caribbean spiders, including the net-casting spider (Family: Deinopidae), published in the Journal of Biogeography and the spiny-backed orb weaver (Gasteracantha cancriformis), published in PeerJ. Using molecular methods, I investigated their evolutionary history, population genetics, and distribution patterns across the Caribbean Archipelago. During a postdoc at UC Davis, I led research focused on the the evolution of eye size in the net-casting spider, published in Scientific Reports. I also had the opportunity to apply high-throughput sequencing to begin to uncover the phylogeography of trapdoor spiders across the California Floristic Province, examining how historical and ecological processes have shaped their genetic diversity and range.
